


Seventeen Cherries

by andathousandyearsmore



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Coming Out, Domestic Avengers, Exploding Cans of Soda, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, Matchmaker Natasha Romanov, No One Likes Marmalade, Oh My Sweet Summer Child, Santa Left Christmas On Tony Stark’s Doorstep, Seltzer, Song: I Knew You Were Trouble (Taylor Swift), Steve Rogers and The Colour Red, Steve Rogers has no chill, The Original 1940s Gay Scandal, Troll Bucky Barnes, Troll Steve Rogers, Unfairly Handsome Sam Wilson, cherries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-03-08 07:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andathousandyearsmore/pseuds/andathousandyearsmore
Summary: A story told in seventeen cherries, literal and figurative.Or: How Steve Rogers finds his way through the 21st century in seventeen different moments, and everyone else helps.Or: America’s favorite star-spangled hero told in seventeen scenes.





	Seventeen Cherries

**Author's Note:**

> Since I read the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens at a mini house party I went to—and yes, I felt like Alessia Cara in _Here_ so much that I pulled up my list of _short stories and poems to read in case of boredom_ so I would have something to do there without desperately wanting to leave way too early)—inspiration struck! And this fic was born. 
> 
> Everyone should read that poem at least once. Or twice. It's beautiful.
> 
> let me know what you think on my [tumblr](https://butonlyifyourecounting.tumblr.com/)!

**I**.

"Yeah, yeah," Tony waves a hand lazily to gesture at the bowl of cherries as he interrupts Bruce, "Sure, I'm pretty sure everyone but star-spangled over there could tie a knot with a cherry stem, but can any of you do a second? No? Is that a no I hear? That's what I—"

Steve rolls his eyes from where he's sitting on the sofa opposite from Tony's chair. He doesn't know when Clint had decided to sprawl out on _the exact same sofa_ , and also on top of him, but he finds that he can't move unless he wants to shove Clint off. As much as he's considering the idea—if only to grab a cherry and prove Tony wrong about the knot—Clint's actually not cracking another joke about him and probably shouldn't be pushed off. 

"Oh, can _you_ do two?" Clint interrupts with a shit-eating grin, foot bouncing on Steve's thigh and digging in a little. Suddenly, shoving Clint off doesn't sound unappealing. "I don't see proof of that." 

"Toss me a cherry, birdbrain, I'll prove it," Tony says, never one to pass up a challenge about his sexual prowess. 

As soon as Clint scowls, but gets up to toss Tony a cherry, Steve gets up and grabs a few for himself too, finding one with a longer stem. He sits back down, begrudgingly let Clint sprawl out all over him and the sofa again. 

"Pitless cherries?" Steve mutters after eating one and blinking when he didn't feel the pit. "Why haven't I seen these before?" 

It appears no one has listened to what he said, thankfully, since they're too busy trying to see if Tony has accomplished a double knot with his stem. After a few minutes, minutes where Steve plucks off the stems of his own cherries to see if he can still tie the knots, Tony sticks out his tongue to proudly show a double-knotted stem. 

"See?" 

"Six minutes? That's a _long_ time," Natasha comments dryly, and anyone who didn't know Nat would think that she was completely uninterested, but anyone who did would know she was completely trolling Tony.

(Steve loves trolling people. He remembers the day when he learned what it was, which also happened to coincide with the day that he learned what the terms salty, tea (not the drink), and HBIC were. He also loves Darcy, who just seems to _get_ it. He's always in full knowledge of SHIELD gossip thanks to her, too. Both of them, it seems, have a shared love for stupidity.) 

"I'd like to see you do better," Tony says with no real heat behind his words, reclining back in his chair. "Or Bruce. Or Clint."

Steve looks at Tony's smug face, and then the cherry stems in his hands. Looking directly at Tony with a light smirk, he asks, "Oh? And why not me?" 

It's fun to see Tony stumble and stutter for words, Steve immediately decides. It's also more fun to watch his face fill with surprise when Steve successfully ties two knots in just four minutes while still maintaining eye contact with the genius. 

When he's done, Steve shrugs and says, "A couple of USO girls showed me all kind of tricks with my tongue. Tying cherry stems was something cool I caught Marlene doing, and then we turned it into a competition once I got good. Dolly was the one to show USO how to double knot 'em." 

He sees all of their faces—trying desperately not to break composure, besides Natasha, who's merely raising and eyebrow with a faint smile on her face that he knows means the same thing—and the shrugs innocently again. He wonders if any of them are going to break and tell him what the trick he picked up is symbolic of, or if they'll even comment on 'tricks of the tongue' to his face. But based on their reactions, he doesn't think that they know that he knows exactly what he's said. 

He rolls his eyes, and then catches a glimpse of the clock. Shit. SHIELD meeting. Steve lifts Clint off of him, gets up, and then plops the archer back onto the sofa, ignoring Clint's surprised squawking. "Save me a few more of those," he says, before turning and leaving. 

Just as soon as the others think he's out of earshot (why do they never remember he has supersenses?), he can hear laughter and Tony saying, "Oh my sweet summer child, we have to get him laid if he doesn't know what... Good kisser, perfect specimen, it'll be easy, right?"

 

 **II**.

Steve has been staring at the fruit in his fridge and the fruit outside his fridge for well over ten minutes. He knows that Natasha has been watching him watch the fruit somewhere around minute eight. He also knows that Natasha thinks she's being incredibly stealthy and hilarious, hoping to frighten him the second he turns around. In reality, he just feels a little annoyed that she's been hearing him mutter to himself about pie fillings without helping. 

"You could just help me pick a fruit," Steve sighs after minute thirteen, when he still hasn't picked something. He doesn't bother to turn around and face her. "Instead of silently laughing at me." She doesn't respond instantly, or even after the fourteenth minute, so he sighs again. 

"Something red," she says nonchalantly. "Like cherry. Second-to-last pull-out shelf, far left and back." 

Well then. That was far too specific that he knows she must have snooped in his fridge for other desserts and leftover foods. Or maybe she planted the cherries in there for this exact scenario. Both of them are plausible. But then he see some the bag of cherries that she's talking about, and then huffs a laugh.

"If you want cherry pie," he says, "you can just ask instead of planting cherries in my fridge and then stealing whatever pie is leftover from today the chance you get. This is enough for four pies, I think. I'll make four if you want." 

"Sure," she responds, and he can hear the implied shrug in her voice. But this is Natasha for 'yes, thank you' so he starts. 

"These are Morello cherries," he says, reading the label on the bag. Steve's a little surprised, because he hasn't ever found a bag of these. Then again, many of his experiences searching for cherries happened to be during the Great Depression and World War II, but even then, he knows that they are often canned. "Nice and sour. If you know how to bake, why don't you?" 

"I don't," she says. "I like cherries." 

He hears what she isn't saying, and then turns around to face her. "Do you want to help?" he casually asks. 

She gives him a wry grin, partially faked. "I could but it's so much more fun watching you."

Steve rolls his eyes at her a little too fondly for her to take him any seriously. "I could just not make any pies, you know. Come on, I bet you have better knife skills than I do. It would go much quicker if you even stirred or poured or pitted. Or pulled out ingredients for different types. I can do cherry walnut, cherry citrus, cherry chocolate, cherry pistachio, spiced cherry, uh, cherry plum? And if there's anything that you can think of..." 

"Where did you learn to bake?" Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow at all the pie types he had rattled out. 

Steve shrugs, before turning around to start pulling out sugar and flour and butter and everything else. "All sorts of places. The neighborhood, the USO showgirls and crew, the Commandos, Google, the usually-there-at-eight-to-two male barista down the street at the café that you like, and anyone with good food to share, I guess." 

He can almost hear the gears in her mind spin with information. "Bruce likes their tea too." 

Huffing a laugh, Steve says, "Every single time I walk in there, he automatically starts pulling out those chocolate hazelnut biscotti you like. I think it's almost a reflex or something. And then he waits for me to rattle off whatever ridiculous drink order you want, while still packaging the biscotti. Trust me, I think it's too late to pin this on Bruce." 

"Pin what?" Bruce asks, walking a little sheepishly into Steve's kitchen. "Also, Steve, Tony wants to let you know that he loves spiced cherries. I didn't get it before, but now I do."

Steve sighs and looks at the ceiling with exasperation creeping up at him. "Tony, if you really wanted a spiced cherry you'd be here rather than sending poor Bruce. And for the love of god, stop watching us on camera. That's stalkerish." 

Bruce shrugs. "I needed a little bit of air." Neither Natasha nor him asks Bruce what exactly he needed a break from. Especially when Bruce's eyes light up a little when he eyes the fridge, and the ingredients that Steve has laid out. "Oh! This reminds me so much of this cherry halwa that..." 

The doctor suddenly blinks and trails off, standing up a little stiffer as the smile from his face disappears. 

"Cherry hall-vah?" Steve asks, stumbling over the unfamiliar word that's surely to be somewhere from the Middle East or any of the countries surrounding the Indian subcontinent. And see, he does know his words. 

"Halwa," Bruce absentmindedly corrects, pronunciating it like hull-vah, but the 'vah' sound is a little like a 'vuh' instead, somewhere in between. It's not lost on Steve how Bruce must have picked up his other languages with accents and regional pronunciations. "When I was in India, halwa was a popular dessert, though also hard to come by in the places I was. I..."

Steve recognizes that look on Bruce's face. "There's a lot of cherries here," he says. "Teach me how to make cherry... uh..."

"Halwa," Bruce corrects, looking at Steve with a nostalgic look in his eyes that's much better than the expression before. "Sure. Natasha?"

"Why not?" She jumps up from where she's sitting and then next to Steve. Natasha gives Steve an innocent look. 

Steve doesn't let himself take offense. Instead, he merely smiles at her, forcing himself to keep the rest of himself blank. 

 

 **III.**  

Having supersoldier senses is both a blessing and a curse, he thinks as he walks down the hallways of SHIELD. Around him, conversations pause as he passes countless agents and then resume once they think he's out of earshot. Truth is, he can hear them perfectly both before and after they pause for 'the sake of his poor ears' and whatever not. Which means he knows just why they paused, and the reason is almost because they were talking about something ' _inappropriate_ ' or about to swear. 

Steve wonders if any SHIELD agents have served in the military before at any time, or if they know that he lived during WWII and the Great Depression if they claim to be such fans of Captain America. His 'poor ears' were desensitized by age six, if even earlier. And anything that by chance he didn't know about was fixed by the Commandos, Peggy, and Stark during the war. 

He does kind of appreciate the agents trying to make a valiant effort on _not_ talking about his ass or his shoulders and waist when he's there, but he doesn't know how to tell them that they're failing. Miserably. Absolutely miserably. It's actually a little funny, if he had someone else to share the joke with. But he doesn't, and everyone remains blissfully unaware, so it's a little irritating. Especially since he isn't such an interesting conversation topic, and he doesn't get why they want to spend time talking about him when he passes by. 

As it so happens, Maria Hill turns out to be the solution for his problem. God bless Maria Hill. 

"Rogers," she says to him one day, popping a cherry into her mouth from a bag that has magically appeared in her hands. "How well could you run before the serum?" 

He snorts. "Before my asthma kicked in? Pretty well for someone with stick legs. After my asthma would kick in? Not a single chance."

"And the serum not only brought you up to speed with normal people, but it made you much better than the rest," she says, more to herself than him. "How well could you see, then? Smell? Hear? Taste? Touch?"

"My senses? They weren't the best back then, not with my color blindness and my left ear," he responds fairly honestly. He eyes the bag of cherries in her hands speculatively, like if he looks at it enough, he'll be magically able to conjure them in his own hands. 

Her eyes snap up to assess him critically. A slow smirk appears on her face as she seems to have discovered something. "You have... you're aware of exactly what you possess."

He smiles serenely, like he doesn't have the faintest of ideas of what she's talking about. Both of them know he's lying, but she hands him a cherry nevertheless, in an uncharacteristic display of generosity. "I'm afraid I don't."

"SHIELD records don't mention a single thing, and neither do any old SSR or Stark records. And no one from your past have ever bothered to mention it. What, was all the data on you _cherry-picked_ to your tactical favor?" She smirks slightly at the bag in her hands, and he thinks he would have missed it if he blinked. 

Steve decides to give that one to her. "Any and all accurate records on me from that time were to be burned on request in case I ever died. Or was thought to be dead, I guess. Oops." 

"On whose request?" Hilll asks, popping another cherry in her mouth, like she's casually having a conversation with him and not trying to uncover his secrets. To anyone watching them, it looks like they're having a conversation about anything random, with how her body posture looks authoritative and lax simultaneously, while his looks like it normally does. 

"Mine," he says a little sharply. "I–my request." 

Her eyebrow raises in a question he already knows is coming. 

"The serum shouldn't have been replicated," he answers. "They shouldn't have tried, because it was the end to a war, not the beginning to a new dawn of humankind or whatever they're going to call it. All the original vials are gone now, and I had Peggy throw out my blood samples because... I know that SHIELD is trying to recreate the serum as I speak, but they're not going to get anywhere with my blood. And the lesser anyone knows about the extent of the serum, the less impressive it is, the better. I wouldn’t wish the serum on even my worst enemies." 

Maria Hill, he decides, is an unshakable woman who handles curveballs better than any baseball player could ever dream to. She doesn’t even bat an eye at him talking like the serum is a curse.

"Why won't SHIELD get anywhere with your blood?" she asks, on a mission to pump out information while he says giving it. She eats another cherry, red as his enhanced blood, and looks at him questioningly. 

He looks at her with a smirk that he knows she doesn't understand. Yet. "I'm sure that you're unfortunately well aware that I'm sterile, right? I also can't catch anything, can't give anything?"

She nods, although she shows a little hint of surprise at how informal and nonchalant he's being about this. "Yes, that was part of SHIELD's initial testing. 

"Wasn't the case before the ice. I mean, yeah they thought the Vita-Rays would mess it up, but it nothing happened. My genetic material's all messed up. And the serum fused with my cells individually. I'm not a biologist, god no, but I think I can see where there would be a problem, right?" 

"Why not mention this before? Why me, why now?" 

"Because," he says, stealing a cherry from her bag with a secret smile. "I know that this conversation, give and take, will have never existed soon. And because I would love for a rumor to start that I have a slightly-enhanced superhearing. No better place than the top." 

She glares at him for taking the cherry, but responds, "I'm not the top." 

"Aren't you?" he asks, stealing another cherry and walking away with a smirk.

Days later, when the agents seem to be making more of an effort to pause their conversations near him, the look of a questionable rumor on their faces, he knows that he's made an impression on Hill.

 

**IV.**

"Hey Cap," Tony says in greeting, despite the fact that the five of them have been in the same room for the past hour, talking about random stories from their pasts. "I've got a question." 

"That's good for you," Steve tells him straight-faced, just as Bucky had used to do to others (and him) countless times whenever Bucky felt like being a smartass. Which was all the time, really. 

"One, I hate you, and two: no one's popped that cherry of yours, have they?" Tony asks, and wow, didn't that come from out of nowhere? There was absolutely no precursor to that, especially since the story before Tony's question was a story about one of Bruce's experiences getting lost in Belize. 

"That genuinely has nothing to do with Belize, or the street parade that Bruce was talking about," Steve slowly responds, thinking quickly on if he's going to take the opportunity to come clean about it. Not that there's anything to come clean about; it wasn't like he was lying or even purposefully hiding it. And yeah, damn it all. Impulses have always been his thing. "But no, one, my _cherry_ has been popped, I'm 94, not dead. And two, I hate you for making me say that." 

Tony sits up straighter, startled, and stares at him. "You've—what? Wha-how?"

"Come on," Steve says, and since he's a little shit, he continues on with, "Do I need to explain how sex works to you?" 

"There's literally been no one in your life like that," Tony tries to explain, and Steve's smile fades a little of how _wrong_ that is in the context of his old life. Now, in the 21st century, it's completely true, he'll give Tony that, but back then was a different story. "And besides, with two superspies and JARVIS, I doubt you could even try to keep it a secret."

"True," Steve concedes, his smile coming back and turning a little devious. "But unless you've built some kind of time travel machine, I don't think that neither Nat and Clint nor JARVIS would have found out." 

He sees Bruce and Clint silently pass money to Natasha and knows what that's all about almost instantly. 

Tony sees it too, and says, "Damn, I didn't think Aunt Peggy and you actually—"

"Nope," Steve shakes his head, popping the p. Then the mental picture of—nope. He wrinkles his nose. "I would have spectacularly messed that up even if I wanted to... just no." The time she had shot at his shield came back to his mind. He suppresses a shudder at just how bad that would have been.

Natasha silently hands money back to Clint and Bruce, the former of who looks happy to get it back. 

"Was it one of the USO showgirls?" Clint asks slyly. "We've all seen those shows in seventh grade."

Steve laughs at even the thought, tamping down the embarrassment of his USO tours being shown. "I bet those recordings don't show rings on left hands. Besides, they were all like my sisters." He doesn't mention how a lot of them weren't real, but rather the first protective measures to unwanted invitations. The second, and last, protective measures any of them needed were a few punches (not that Steve needed to throw many of them).

"Anyone we would recognize?" Clint asks, frowning when Steve mentions wedding rings. 

Steve shakes his head as he tries to hide the grin that's desperately trying to break out. He can only picture the reactions they'll have if he ever mentions that he didn't really know the other guy's name. Mainly because a) he's not supposed to have anonymous sex and b) it had been a guy. He knows that he probably should have known or even remembered, but it been a murky, hazy time punctuated with sickness and Bucky looking relieved or worried, and even the serum couldn't fix that part of his memories. Well, actually, he knows the guy's fake name, and he knows that he might have learned 

"See, that just sounds fa—" Tony suspiciously comments, leaning back into his seat like a cat that's gotten their cream. 

"If it helps, I don't know their real name either," Steve blurts out. "Couldn't recognize them if I had to."

They all blink, collectively, and stare at him like he's said something incredibly offensive. Then: "Did you _pay_ for it?"  

He can feel a blush creep up, goddamn, when he instinctively protests, "No! I-no, not that there's... really? No." 

"Well, you can't just say things like that in polite company with people assuming things!" Tony chides, like he's ever listened to that himself. 

"Right, like polite company would assume that in the first place," Steve dryly says, rolling his eyes. "Besides, if you're claiming  polite company, I'm calling Pepper." 

 

**V.**

He walks into the communal kitchen fully expecting it to be void of people and full of food. He isn't right about either of those, unfortunately. Looking at what's in front of him, he should have just made do with the stuff in his own kitchen and not have exposed himself to this. So what if he doesn't have the jelly/jam for a good old PB&J? Steve shouldn't have chanced it.

  
"Let's do this!" Clint grins as he's doing something that Steve can't see (his back is to him). Natasha, next to him and facing Steve, looks more amused than anything, but she has a bag of popcorn in her hands. The microwave is wide open behind her.

"What is happening?" Steve asks confusedly, because he does see two rows of cups, filled with only a shot of liquid, neatly aligned in front of both Tony and Bruce (!!!??), but they aren't filled with a single drop of alcohol as far as he can tell. They're filled with seltzer (probably from the empty Polar bottles that are right behind Clint and maybe the two bottles that are in Clint's hands right now as he sees pouring a third row) and really strong seltzer at that.

"Apparently I'm not allowed to have a single drop of alcohol right now; on pain of death from Natasha and Pepper," Tony says by ways of explanation, like that explains why there are shots of seltzer in large red cups in the first place.

Steve just takes it as everything that he needs to know and doesn't press any harder. Whatever.

"Is there any grape jelly down here? Jam?" he asks.

Natasha shakes her head no. "There's marmalade."

Steve glares at the disappointing fridge for a second, and then grabs the final bottle of seltzer—black cherry apparently, but seltzer is clear and cherries shouldn't be black so he doesn't know what's up with that. He pours himself a cup, stealing a cup from Clint, and then drinks it.

He ends up taking the entire bottle upstairs.

 

 **VI**.

He's always had a particular relationship (read: fascination or hatred) with the colour red. Red was one of the colours he could never see properly before the serum and red was one of the colours that had never made sense to him, because he couldn't picture it (not for a lack of trying). Red was the colour of cherries, and the apples he desperately wanted to be green or something else so he could portray them without feeling like he was doing an injustice. Red was the colour of his Ma's lipstick whenever she marched in rallies and red was the colour of the penny candy that Bucky liked. Red was the faded tablecloth (when they had it), red was the blood dripping from too many punches, red was the teacher's favourite during art school, red was the blouses on pictures of pin-ups that he did, red was so much and also so little to him. It was anger, it was love, they said, but it was a challenge, a puzzle, a mystery, a start and end to his imagination, a symbol, a—

Red was the colour of Peggy's lips when he stepped out of the Vita-Ray chamber, bright and bold like nothing else. It captured his attention more than the descriptions of red he heard from his mother, Bucky, his fellow art students, and everyone else. He thinks maybe that's where the rumors of him and Peggy started, from that fateful day where he fell in love with the color red and wanted to commit it to memory forever. And then, red was a color on his costume, his dancing monkey, and the entire USO tour. It was everywhere, from the girls' outfits to their lipsticks, from the set to their props, and everything in between. 

There was everything from scarlet to maroon and he couldn't get enough. But red was also the colour of Schmidt's face, and the fear on the reflection of his face in that moment he thought he might die, or Bucky might have died. The same red was on Peggy's beautiful dress from the night he sealed everyone's fates. Red was a tricky colour, he though again. Ruthless. 

Red was his shield and Dum-Dum's hair in the light, and Dernier's beret whenever he felt like being a stereotypical Frenchie, and the colour of Bucky's god-awful socks. As always, red was Peggy as well. 

Blood was red. Devastation and death was red. Death walks and Nazi flags were red. HYDRA and prisoners were red. War, he found out, was too much red (but the Tesseract was blue and weapons were grey and black and blue, so how did that work out?). The Axis was red (but so was America).

Bucky's death—more red. His death—red. His not death—no red, but it was so wrong that he had wondered in that moment what the hell red was anymore if it wasn’t there. The new world's flashiness and loudness—so much red. The stamps that marked all the deaths of his friends—red. The stamp that marked Peggy's file as retired _and_ classified—red. 

Natasha Romanoff's hair, Tony Stark's metal suit, his new ‘onesie’, Bruce Banner's seemingly hidden anger, Thor's cape—red. 

Red isn't such a fun color anymore, now that it's more than a symbol of the gifts that the serum has given him. His nightmares (the ones that aren't about him crashing or Bucky falling) are filled with men bleeding out on battlefields, gunshots littered all about like someone had handed out disguised cherry candies. Sometimes, he'll wake up with red blood and ash in his mouth, all too reminiscent of war and a displacement that feels much too raw, like blistered red skin and bruised wounds. Other times, he'll think of the red that medics wore, even little crosses, whenever they told Steve that someone else has died on his watch, under his rescue. 

In this century, it's knife wounds, Tony's suit when he falls out of the wormhole, and all the blood that the Chitauri have spilled and that Steve could have prevented. Everything is either bright red or blood red, like the bowl of cherries in his hand that he can't eat anymore, not when everything's too overwhelming. Life's like a bowl of cherries, people say, easy and pleasant. He wants to laugh and cry, because life _is_ like a bowl of cherries; bloody and sour, teetering on the edge of bitter and sweet but straying away from both. 

 

 **VII**.

"Everything is so goddamn expensive," he mutters to himself as he strolls across the aisles of the grocery supermarket, looking for everything on his list (the Avengers' list). "Why is everything so expensive?" 

"Inflation," Natasha answers, because she's come along to supposedly make fun of him being a grandpa in a store. Also because he's pretty sure she wants to slip in a few items that might not have made their way onto his list, mainly because it's also funny to her when he spots things like Cajun-spiced, organic pork rinds in the cart with no recollection of putting them there. 

He knows that prices have _actually_ gotten to be more expensive, even when accounting for inflation. It's disgusting, that's what it is. There's so much food waste from markets like these, and so many who can't afford food because it's so expensive. It never fails to make Steve just a little angry when he thinks about it. 

"Why are you guys like this," Steve asks to absolutely no one when he spots the next thing: a food product that's a handful of refrigerator magnets thrown together haphazardly. He knows he's adapted pretty well to this century, but things like paleo-approved stickers just don't make too much sense. Lucky he doesn't have to worry about any of that. 

"That's Tony," Natasha says when she peers over his side to see what he's pointing at. "I think. Could be Thor."

Steve just blinks, and then decides to have Natasha go find that one. "You could help."

Natasha points to a package full of—oh, she already has found it. She smirks. "Old man."

"With good enough eyes to see the three bags of cherries in the cart you've put in at some point," he counters, pulling one out. "GMO-free. Organic. Natural. Real." 

"Does it really say that?" Natasha asks, pulling the bag from his hands. "Real. Huh."

"Do they need to say that? Are some of the cherries out here not... real?" Steve asks. 

Natasha shrugs, staring at the bag. "I don't know." Steve shudders and makes a point to find the next thing on his list, which happens to be cherries, written in Natasha's handwriting. The next one happens to be pomegranates, also written in Natasha's handwriting. Also a red fruit. Okay, then. 

 

 **VIII**.

When he goes to grab breakfast, hungry enough that he's extremely grateful that he didn't have the serum or a serum-enhanced body before the army (and later Tony Stark) fed his insane appetite, he finds that he's not the only one with the same idea. Which is extremely strange, because he's never the last one to eat breakfast, and they usually all aren't there at the same time. Actually, most of them don't even get out of bed (or get in bed, depending on what science binge Tony and Bruce are on) when Steve grabs breakfast.

It's even more strange when he can feel eyes on him as he silently ignores them all in favor of popping bread in the toast to tide him over until he can use his pancake batter from last night. Steve's learned to cook by sheer necessity of his appetite, and he figures it doesn't hurt to be prepared for whenever he has a 'late' morning. Even of his version of late is 8 in the morning (which is actually very late).

Within a few minutes, when he's started the first pancake and finished the first few pieces of toast, he starts to forget about all the other eyes on him. He starts to relax. Bad idea. Bad idea. Especially when he starts singing that song by Taylor Swift that refuses to leave his head no matter how hard he tries. He knows he can't hit some of the high notes (so goddamn high), but he can sing trouble, trouble, trouble, like the best of them. In an octave or two lower. But it's fine.

He pauses, and freezes when he hears Bruce clear his throat somewhere near his fourth pancake and when he starts to launch into a song he doesn't know the title of but really should.

"W-oh. Oh!" he exclaims, stumbling back into the kitchen counter and colliding with it in his surprise. He can't believe that he just forgot that there were other people around him. He wonders for a split second if his age is catching up to him, and then dismisses that thought instantly. He's the youngest person here, biologically (not chronologically, god no), even if he doesn't know Natasha's true age. He just knows she has to be at least in her later twenties, and he's in the middle of them.

"Nice singing chops you've got there," Tony comments, and Steve can see what a struggle it is for Tony not to say anything else. "But Taylor Swift? Seriously? You're kidding me."

Steve makes a play right out of Tony's book and doesn't defend himself or apologize for something embarrassing. He doesn't even blush, to his credit, at being caught out. Instead, he merely says, straight-faced, "It was on the list of songs you recommended."

Tony falters in his words, and Steve flips the last pancake onto his plate before turning the heat off.

"No shame," Clint says with a grin that makes Steve groan internally. He's going to get shit for it, he knows. And probably not even for the Taylor Swift part, knowing Clint.

"Actually, no shame's the reason that you're in trouble, Steve," Natasha bluntly says, getting to the point she should have one TS song ago. Not that Steve's feeling a littler vindictive.

"Trouble, trouble, trouble," Clint sings quietly, and awfully.

He blinks, ignoring Clint for a second, and Bruce and Tony's side conversation that's mainly Tony snickering to Bruce about his singing. "Okay. What do I have an inappropriate amount of shame for?"

"Agent Frieson has finally figured out that you've been lying to them," Natasha says, fixing him with a look that might be disappointing if he cared. Agent Frieson... oh! He remembers them.

"Wait a second, aren't you not a liar? Cherry tree and all? Squeaky-clean, right?" Tony asks.

Steve blinks again. "Cherry tree? What are you talking about?"

"You cut one down and didn't lie about it," Tony says, sounding unsure about it. Good. He's wrong, he should be unsure.

Steve wonders what the hell Tony is saying, and if he knows who he's talking to. "You know I grew up in Brooklyn, right? Like, Depression-era, shattered glass broke Brooklyn. Where the hell did I cut down a cherry tree with a hatchet? I don't know what would've been rarer, the hatchet or tree."

"That was George Washington, Tony," Bruce says. Then, as an afterthought, "Supposedly."

"Doesn't matter," Natasha waves away the sidetracking dismissively. "He's still in trouble. Frieson's causing a fuss about how much of his time was wasted by you lying to him and derailing him."

Steve rolls his eyes. "He acted like I didn't know what electricity was. Or sliced bread. Or the Olympics. The Olympics. What am I, a baby? Wrong end of the timeline."

"So you're a troll," Clint firmly decides, sounds too happy about it.

Steve doesn't want to give up his game yet, so he says, "No, I just went along with whatever he said. Don't know why that makes me a liar or a... troll, but if he didn't want his time wasted, he shouldn't have explained Snow White to me."

Clint slumps a little, looking like he's decided something against it, and Steve hides his smile.

 

**IX.**

Steve wishes that he could say he say this coming a long time ago, but it’s not until he reaches the cafe when he realizes that he’s not here for a friendly coffee with Natasha. Natasha’s not going to show at all, and in her place is going to be whatever poor, unsuspecting woman that she roped into this blind date. Honestly, Steve hopes that the other person doesn’t know. Because otherwise he doesn’t want to think about the implications of him on a date he doesn’t want to be on with a person who actually wants this date. Just... no. 

He enters the café and sees that it is bustling with people of all ages and types. Immediately he tries to figure out who could possibly be there for him. Steve has a feeling that Natasha went for a SHIELD agent, so all of the college students with their textbooks are vetoed. Same goes for the parents with kids, or anyone who’s looking above their thirties. He has a brief moment of panic when he realizes that the Avengers don't really knows his age, or have stopped to consider that he’s in his mid-twenties, because they have no reason to. He wonders if Natasha _has_ set him up with someone above the age of thirty, and panics a little again, before he sees a woman sitting in the corner. 

From where she’s sitting, it seems that she has perfect sight lines and can see everything that happens in the cafe. It also seems like whoever sits across from her is out at a complete disadvantage, which the lady probably intended for Natasha. Ha. Based on the way she’s looking at her phone with feigned interest and the way her eyes dart up every once in a while to survey her surroundings, Steve thinks he’s found her. She looks to be in her mid-twenties as well, so he stops panicking. 

Still, before he sits down, he asks, “Are you, by any chance, waiting for Natasha?”

The cherry muffin in front of her, which hasn’t been touched at all by the woman, points in favor of a yes, because Natasha loves all things cherry-flavored. 

The woman’s eyes flick upwards to him appraisingly, and then in irritantance. He bites back his smile, because he feels the exact same way. But he doesn’t want the smile coming across as something he doesn’t want it to be, so he stops himself. 

“I was,” she says dryly, and then motions for him to sit in the seat across from her. He almost asks if he can actually sit next to her (because he’s paranoid and would also like to see everything) so that he won’t be in a complete blind spot, but then decides that it would be rude and uncomfortable for her. Plus he can stand to loosen a little bit and let this woman take care of watching everything. He can be a not-asshole sometimes. 

“I’m guessing this isn’t your first time,” he says. 

The woman raises a singular eyebrow. “Excuse me?” 

“Getting set up by Natasha,” he clarifies. 

“You can say that,” she begrudgingly says, like it’s paining her to speak. But before he can say that he’ll leave if she wants him to, she continues on to say, “I had actually thought she got off my case and fixated entirely on her new hopeless friend, and instead she did this.” 

“Me,” he says, because he’s slow on the uptake, she him. 

“You,” she says, unimpressed. 

“It makes sense,” he lamely shrugs. “Two birds, one stone.” 

She raises the same eyebrow up again, only this time in surprise rather than offense. “Really? I wouldn’t think that you would ever consider me to be your type.” 

It’s not said in self-deprecation, or even like the woman feels hurt or anything by that statement. No, Steve thinks, she wouldn’t be the type to compromise herself even an inch for someone. It’s more like she thinks it’s a fact. 

“Why not?” he asks curiously, careful not to add any false signals or anything. 

She runs a hand throughout her hair, which is naturally black at the roots but slowly fades into a maroon, and then an electric red at the tips in one long gradient. And then she points to her nose, pierced with a single red stone. Finally, she gestures to her own hands, covered in a beautiful henna design. Well, he thinks she had been gesturing to her hands, and then he notices the tattoo peeking underneath her shirt sleeves. 

And then, after she doesn’t say a single word, she looks back at him with a steely look, almost daring. He doesn’t flinch, because now he understands perfectly. 

“I like the color red just fine,” he says neutrally, wondering how he didn’t notice the henna on her hands before. She doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, surveiling him, and then he promptly pulls out his phone, connecting to the Wi-Fi here. 

“My cousin’s wedding was a few days ago,” she says. 

“Sorry?” he blinks, looking back up at her. 

“The henna,” she says. “It’s customary to get henna done a day or two before weddings if you’re close family. It’s temporary, unlike everything else.” 

“Oh,” he says. “That sounds like a fun custom.” 

“You also get washed in turmeric,” she frowns. 

He blinks again. “Isn’t that a spice? A plant? How do you—” Steve cuts off when he sees her face, unimpressed once more. “ _Oh_. Okay.”

“I’m still technically on vacation,” she says. “Which is why I’m even here.”

“You do—” Steve starts to ask, and then stops because it’s probably also rude to ask someone if they’re a spy or if they have a desk job.

“Ex-covert ops,” she offers, taking pity on him. “And current... intelligence analyst.”

He honestly has more questions at this point, the first being why she’s telling him this when she doesn’t like him. 

“That’s an interesting job switch.” 

She shrugs vaguely, not a single expression on her face still. He doesn’t quiet like people he can’t get somewhat of a read on, but he’s finding he doesn’t mind. “I have a degree in world history and computer science, so not really.” 

Steve doesn’t know what to say after that’s again, because now he wonders just who she is. Honestly, he knows where she works for, he knows the vaguest idea if what she does, and the fact that she’s an acquaintance of Natasha that Natasha obviously likes. They’re friends, probably, even. 

And he knows she has a faint accent that he can’t place, yet. 

“Computer Science?” he asks, ignoring the history for now. 

“UMASS,” she says, and at his blank look, clarifies, “University of Massachusetts, Amherst,” and now her accent clicks. Boston. Probably for her entire life. 

“Impressive,” he says. She shrugs again. 

“Not as much as I am by you surprising me,” she honestly tells him, and he looks at her again in surprise. 

“Me?” he asks. 

“You’re not half bad,” she says, and then extends a hand above the table. “Agent Vangala.” 

“Steve Rogers,” he says, not commenting on the lack of a first name. 

She quirks a half-smile, probably fake, almost as if she was expecting something else. “Fine. Call me Em.” 

“I’m half-surprised your favorite color isn’t green,” he remarks, hearing that.

It takes her a moment to follow his absurd train of thought (he doesn’t know why his mind jumped to emeralds rather than the name Emily or something) and then she grins. 

“My name isn’t _Emerald_ ,” she says, “Nor is it Emily, if you’re wondering. My parents liked me enough not to name me something as pretentious as Emerald.” She smiles wryly, and he feels like he’s passed some kind of test now that she doesn’t look like she actively hates him. 

He definitely knows that _he’s_ been testing everyone and icing out whoever feels like they are owed time by him. He’s surprised she’s actually talking to him, because this whole blind date thing comes across as both of them owing each other time they don’t want to give. 

“Is red your favorite colour, though?” Steve asks. 

“Purple,” she says, and he can’t tell if she’s lying or not at this point. 

She pulls out something from her pockets, and her shirt sleeve rises to expose more of her tattoo, which Steve can make out to be... a bunch of squiggles? Maybe it’s a language. Or words. Definitely no language he has probably even heard of (and he would have guessed Hindi but he vaguely knows that Hindi involves a lot more straight lines and a bar at the top). 

“It’s a saying,” she says, placing a tube of cherry red lipstick on the table while she pulls out something else from her pockets. She then says something that completely flies over Steve’s head, probably the phrase. “Before you ask, it’s two words.” 

He sees four or five little squiggle things, and then a comma, and then four or five squiggle things after that. He’s guessing that each squiggle thing is a character or a letter. Steve had thought each character was a word in itself, like Japanese, but clearly he was wrong. 

She holds a compact mirror in one hand and then reapplies her lipstick with the other, though she seems to barely even use the mirror. “If you really want to learn more, google Dravidian languages and work from there. And no, Hindi falls under a different type of language.” 

“What language is your tattoo?” Steve asks. 

“Uh, look up T-E-L-U-G-U,” she says, snapping shut her mirror and then placing both the lipstick and the mirror in her pockets. 

Before he has the chance to do so, she suddenly stands up. And he’s suddenly aware of the fact that she’s fairly short, maybe an inch or two above five feet if her five-inch heels aren’t counted. 

“Okay,” she says, “Let’s go.”

He’s lost, maybe for the millionth time ever since he’s stepped foot in this cafe. “Um, what?” 

She sighs. “Listen, Natasha knows a lot of things but she just set up a guy who’s gay as far as _dating_ women is concerned. And she did it with a woman who’s probably more into women than men when it comes to actually dating too, on the flip side. So that sums up everything that I need to know about what _your_ cultural exposure has been, even considering the fact that you’ve been living with Tony Stark and Clint Barton. You look like you’ve figured out most of it, but there’s some things you can only be _shown_ , so let’s go.” 

“But... you don’t even like me,” he protests lamely, frozen by her explanation.

She smirks, red lipstick quirking up almost just like Peggy. “I don’t like that costume of yours, no matter how ass-flattering. But you’re shaping up to be decent person in normal clothes, so let’s go.”

 

**X.**

When he walks into the entertainment room, because JARVIS has called everyone down for movie night, the first thing Clint does is hand him a can of cherry cola. Steve, being suspicious, tries to see if something’s been tampered with or not, but it doesn’t seem like anything hasn’t happened to it. 

“There’s Sprite next to the popcorn if you want it,” Clint says casually, too casually that Steve eyes the can again. Everyone knows that he likes the cola better, but he also doesn’t mind the lime one if he has to drink it. Because he doesn’t trust Clint right now. Or maybe it’s a double bluff, and the cola’s fine after all. 

So, Steve, being an absolute idiot (he should have gone for option c, _none_  of the above) opens it and has the soda explode all over him. He honestly can’t say that he didn’t bring it upon himself. 

“Really?” he asks, standing there and dripping with cherry cola all over him. There’s still half the can left, so he drinks it and then throws the can into the basket, nailing the shot. “Really?” 

“The lime one would have exploded more,” Clint says, looking a little more disappointed. “I’m disappointed in you, Steve.” 

Steve just stares at Clint and then walks over to pick up the lime one. He pops the tab and aims the opening directly at Clint. 

“I’m not,” he smirks, and then leaves to change his clothes. 

 

 **XI**. 

Em pays for both of them faster than he can even reach for his wallet, only to realize that it’s not there. He doesn’t even have time to panic before she herds both of them out of the shops, arms laden with bags of clothes. And just when he starts checking his other pockets, despite knowing that it won’t be there, she smirks and then hands him his wallet. 

He stares at her, feeling a little betrayed and confused. He knows she used her own money, so why take his? 

“You weren’t paying,” Em merely says, and then reaches up to mess his hair up. He feels a few stray pieces of hair flopping on his forehead. 

“What,” he says, as she digs through a bag of clothing to find something. 

“Loosen up,” she says, handing him a pair of aviators that match his outfit. “Make yourself smaller. Either keep the confused puppy look on all the time or at least make an effort to stop glaring at everything so hard. Wear the sunglasses; they take attention away from your eyes. Untuck your... top. Stop staring at your shoes like you have all of today. Unroll your sleeves, unless you’re hot, in which case roll them up further.” 

“Why?” he asks. 

“At least five people have tried to snap our pictures when they saw you. I have no desire to be on any news article or be the subject of any rumors, so you cannot be noticed as Cap. Understood?” Em asks bluntly, looking up at him critically. “Oh, and one more thing.” 

“Yeah?” he asks. 

“You're going to be groped on the subway,” she says. “Consider yourself lucky if no one gets your ass.” 

“Is that a guarantee?” 

She stares at him, eyes boring into him a little more than he’s comfortable with. “Good as one.” 

“Alright then,” he says. “Let’s go.” 

When they hop on the subway, for which she also pays for both of them, he finds that they’ve found themselves in the middle of a rush hour, which explains why she seemed so insistent on the fact that he was going to get groped. Rush hour is always crazy, and that seems like it hasn’t changed from the forties. 

His mind starts to wander to other things from the forties when she suddenly says, “Stop thinking.” 

“What?” he asks. “That’s probably impossible for that to happen.” 

There’s the unimpressed look again. “Clearly you have good memories from here,” Em notices. “Stop wallowing in them, or I’m going to make you another guarantee that you’ll end up spiraling.” 

“From good memories?” he asks on reflex, and also in confusion. 

“It’s not the bad memories that really break people,” she says, point blank and factual as ever. “It’s the good ones. I should know.” 

He doesn’t know what to say to her. Honestly, he feels like he should be a little annoyed with her for telling him to just stop himself from thinking about his life and too bluntly stopping him, but he can’t deny she’s effective in the moment. 

She sighs. “At least you look like a confused puppy again. Though you’re concerned for me, how cute. It’s nothing tragic, by the way. I’ve studied human emotions too long to not know.”  

“Oh,” he says. 

She taps the side of her head. “Got an extra gene that lets me figure out your entire life story up here and spit it back out to you. More or less. And I heard SHIELD, in case you’re wondering, wanted people like me, so I thought why not get a bite of that cherry?” 

“Why are you telling me any of this?” Steve asks, though now he thinks, _mutant_? 

“Consider it a trade for figuring out dirty secrets about you,” Em offers. And then, “People don’t really like the word mutant. Not PC.”

”Sorry.” 

 

 **XII**.

“Stop setting me up,” he complains to Natasha, who looks severely unimpressed at him. He even gets the eyebrow raise. 

“What about Diana from Linguistics?” Natasha asks instead, continuing on as if she had no regard for what he just said. Which she honestly didn’t. 

“Unless her last name happens to be Prince, no. If her last name does happen to be Prince, have fun with that,” Steve says. 

“A Diana Prince?” Natasha repeats, almost a question but not quite.

Steve doesn’t say anything but, “Have fun.” 

“Fine,” Natasha says in that voice she uses when she isn’t done with something. “What about Lara from HR?” 

“What will it take me to get you to stop?” Steve asks. 

“Get yourself a date,” she responds blithely. 

“Not happening,” he says. 

“Then no.” 

“Not even if I ask pretty please? With a cherry on top?” Steve asks because he’s an asshole and he’s fully aware of it. Natasha just sighs, not bothering to give him a response. 

 

**XIII.**

Out of all the questions that he expects from a reporter during a press conference, “What’s your favorite fruit?” is not one of them. It should never be one if them, because if someone really expects to get that question then they’ve gone insane. And Steve is sure, despite everything, that he has not yet fully lost his mind. Has he partially lost it? Definitely; anyone with a vague knowledge of history and about him could tell that. Fully? No. 

And yet, here he is, sitting in a chair and being asking about his favorite fruit. 

“I have no clue,” he says honestly. 

“Well I love a good orange,” Tony says, playing along because he knows how to roll with the punches and make Steve’s life harder. “And since Spangles and I are about as different as apples and oranges, I’m going to guess that Mr. Apple Pie over here likes apples. Get it?” 

Steve pulls a face. “You might want to change the expression to apples, oranges, and cherries since my favorite fruits are cherries,” he completely lies. He has no clue what his favorite fruit is. He knows what he’s partial to, and he knows what fruits hold good memories (oranges, always meant to be shared when received as a Christmas gift or apples that crunch right with Bucky around or lemons for the cake Ma always made when they had the money) but he has no clue what he holds above the most. 

It’s a ridiculous question. And yet everyone has answers. Even Natasha (pomegranates).

 

 **XIV**.

The inevitable happens. SHIELD finally clears Steve competent to join a STRIKE team. With the declaration comes a move to D.C. away from the other Avengers, even though Natasha spends half her time between the Tower and D.C. and Clint spends his time floating from the Tower and god knows where else.  

He finds that he has nice neighbors. Even Kate, the agent assigned to spy on him seems nice enough, even if she’s doing it for the job. Kate also reminds him of someone that he can’t quite place. 

Actually, he finds out that everyone in his building is connected to SHIELD in some shape or form, but only _Kate’s_ been assigned to him. He thinks he has mostly everyone figured out, but he doesn’t want to figure out what the elderly woman next to him does or did for SHIELD. Even after he belatedly realizes she’s at least ten years younger than his true age. 

When he hears someone rap his doorknock, he has absolutely no clue who it could be. He doesn’t expect, least of all, his next-door neighbor holding some kind of a dish. 

“You appeared lonely and I figured it was rude to introduce myself empty-handed,” his neighbor, in her upper eighties, says bluntly, and with all the force of a hurricane behind her. 

“Of course not,” he smiles, “I’m Steve, by the way.” 

She smiles mischievously at him, much like Peggy would often do before she often conned her way out of (or into) a situation. “Call me Angie,” she says in a way that makes Steve wonder if Angie is her real name or not. 

“Of course,” he finds himself repeating, “ _Angie_.” 

“That’s cherries in the snow cake, by the way,” she says. “Stole the recipe from a diner I used to work at.” 

“O-kay,” Steve slowly says, and then the smile on his face loses its fakeness. “Come in, I have a feeling that I’m not going to be able to finish this without someone else curing my loneliness.”

She grins again, this time reminiscent of the showgirls from the USO and he wonders if his neighbor, _Angie_ , has ever spent time doing theater or as an actress.

 

 **XV**.

“Hey,” he says, knocking on the door of his neighbor _Kate_. Who actually happens to be Agent 13, or Sharon Carter. And Sharon Carter just so happens to be related to Peggy, though he knows he can’t bring Peggy up to her much or she’ll catch that he knows. 

It’s a little irksome that her cover happens to be a nurse just like his Ma, and that her cover also happens to be everything that the textbooks say that his mother is like. Overly kind, bubbly, sweet, and optimistic. He wonders what would happen if he ever told SHIELD and the world that his mother was actually a woman who was kind to only those who deserved it and to those that it would score her community points with, and that she was a flaming socialist liberal who he learned from. 

He has a strong feeling that Sharon, whatever she’s like, is nothing like what SHIELD thinks his mother was. He has an even stronger feeling that Sharon and him would be great friends if her assignment on him ever ends.

“Do you, by any chance, have a few tomatoes I could borrow?” Steve asks instead when she opens the door. 

“Tomatoes?” Kate repeats, blinking at his request for a second. “Um, I think got a few of the plum ones and a few cherry tomatoes.” 

“Cherry tomatoes,” he flatly says, a question. 

She makes a small ‘o’ with her fingers, to indicate the size of them. “They’re good for quick salads,” she offers, and then with a rueful grin adds on, “Which means they’ll waste away in my fridge. Want them?” 

“Thanks,” he smiles and says right before she disappears into her kitchen to grab them for him. She hands him a medium sized container of tomatoes that are small and ovular. 

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. He nods appreciatively and then goes back to his apartment. Now he has tomatoes, and reasonable visual proof that she’s definitely been assigned to him, and not just to report on him. Steve should probably be a little more thankful to her; she’s probably the reason he hasn’t been visited by people who want to murder him in his sleep. 

 

 **XVI**. 

He likes running in D.C., especially when it’s beautiful outside and no one gives a single fuck about who he is. Steve loves this place that kids itself to be a city (it’s really not) and yet has seen its fair share of government officials and famous people. D. C doesn’t care about him, unless it’s governmental D.C., which is an unavoidable evil. For the most part, though, he’s good as invisible.

Because god, he really does not need the newspapers making fun of him when he runs in and out of the path set by the beautiful cherry tree blossoms while staring up at them. He can only imagine the headlines mocking him for being amazed by cherry blossoms. And Tony’s if he’s going to be honest. 

So Steve fully blames the cherry blossoms when he almost runs into someone on his path. He also blames his sketch pad, which is practically begging him to be brought outside so he can draw said cherry blossoms. They’re beautiful and he knows he’s going to do them no justice but he wants to try. 

“Sorry!” Steve apologizes. “Sorry!” 

The runner who he almost plowed turns around and gives Steve an easy smile. “No worries, man. Happens sometimes.” 

Steve thinks that life is either being extremely cruel to him, or that it’s going out of his way to fill today with beauty. The runner is... unfairly handsome and he has a great smile that’s doing things to Steve. 

“Are you sure? I almost ran you over,” Steve stammers out, and he forces himself to stop staring like an idiot at the runner. “I don’t think that just... happens.”

The runner laughs and the warm feeling in Steve comes back just as soon as he tries to ignore it. Great. Just great. This is literally no time to develop a massive infatuation on someone he’s met for all of a second. 

“Like I said, it’s no problem,” the runner says easily, completely unfazed and Steve wonders just what fazes people in D.C. And by people he means this runner. “Give me a heads up next time.”

Steve nods and manages to muster out a, “Will do,” and a grin before he heads out again. If he stays any longer, Steve knew he would make a fool out of himself. 

Later, Steve finds out, he’ll definitely make an impression on this runner, who’s more than just a runner. 

 

 **XVII**.

Steve wakes up and he knows instantly that he isn’t on his bed. Or a bed, period. 

“Get off of me,” he hears Bucky mutter, and Steve smiles against Bucky’s chest, where his head his buried since he apparently fell asleep on his boyfriend. Literally. Steve didn’t think he would ever have a chance to do that again ever since he woke up from the ice. He’s never been happier to be proven wrong.

He thanks his stars that Bucky’s back to him now. He thanks every single god and every single member of Thor’s family that Bucky’s here again with him now. 

Steve's arms tighten around Bucky just a little, and he knows that Bucky’s rolling his eyes at him. 

“Steve,” Bucky whispers. “Footsteps.” 

He has a moment of panic, and then he decides to fuck it. They’ve spent long enough hiding everything, and there’s no time like now to let go. “It’s the twenty first century,” Steve mumbles into Bucky’s chest. “Nobody gives a fuck anymore.”

He can practically hear Bucky’s thoughts whirling bullet-train rapid. “Are you sure?” 

“If you want me to, I’ll get off you,” Steve offers, second-guessing everything he thought that Bucky wanted about their relationship. Out of the two of them, Bucky was always the one who talked about not having to hide, about one day reaching a world where they weren’t illegal, where they wouldn’t get kicked out or killed for being gay. It wasn’t as if Steve didn’t want the same, but he always thought that the possibility was always going to remain a dream. 

“You’re heavy weight, Rogers,” Bucky says with a sharp smile that has to be on his face even if Steve can’t see it right now. And just like that, they’re fine. Perfectly fine.

“Is that what I am?” Steve mumbles, before he turns over, and then realizes that he has no space to turn over, which means he falls off of Bucky and the sofa. 

“And an idiot,” Bucky adds when he’s done laughing at Steve, a sound that makes up for his wounded pride. Bucky sits up on the sofa, leaning back into it with how much he had laughed. 

“Shut up,” Steve says, getting off the floor and fully awake now. 

“Come on Stevie,” Bucky grins, “You want me to kiss it better?” 

At first, he’s tempted to say no, just because he’s contrary and stubborn. But Steve’s eyes catch the challenge in Bucky’s eyes and the smirk on his face that’s just daring him into saying yes. And really, Steve’s only human when presented with the attention of one James Buchanan Barnes. 

“M’not saying no if you want to kiss my ass, Buck,” Steve says instead. 

“Maybe not in the common rooms,” Bucky frowns. “Unless you got a thing for everyone yelling at us about messing the sofa up.” Steve wonders what’s really on Bucky’s mind, because he gets up off the sofa with a smirk on his face. 

“Maybe not the sofa...” Steve says, closing the distance between him and Bucky with a kiss. “But somewhere else and maybe they wouldn’t mind.” 

“That’s shameful, Rogers,” Bucky teases. “Someone would kick up a fuss.” 

“Damn right they would,” Steve says. “Can’t you see the headlines already?”

“What, Captain America caught having having gay sex?” Bucky dryly asks. 

“Who’s caught having gay sex?” Tony asks, strolling into the common room, with Natasha and Clint on his heels. Judging by the look of it, it seems like they had been in a conversation embarrassing to Tony before right now. 

“No one,” Steve blurts out the same time that Bucky responds, “Steve.” He gives Bucky a dirty look, but Bucky’s grin only gets wider. Steve kicks at Bucky’s leg with a huff. 

Tony looks like Christmas came early. No, he looks like someone gift-wrapped Christmas with a pretty red bow and delivered it to the Tower early. 

He claps with the same proudness and intensity that Steve’s seen parents do when their child does something vaguely remarkable. “I’m so proud. I can’t tell if you’re lying or not, but either way I’m so proud of one of you.” 

Steve blinks. “What?” 

“Either Bucky’s given up and decided to joke about your sex life too, or it’s true and you’ve gotten yourself a nice sex scandal!” Tony cheerfully says, and then he pauses. “Which is it?” 

Steve spares a glance over to Bucky, who’s grinning like a fool at Steve, acting innocent. Fine, then. If Bucky’s just going to sit back and watch as Steve tries to explain that (Since there’s no way he’s going to pull off lying now), then Steve’s going to get him in too. 

“Considering everything, probably the second,” Steve says. And god, is the reaction on Tony’s face hilarious to watch. 

“What?” Tony asks, blinking too fast to be normal. He repeats, “What?” 

Steve rolls his eyes. 

“Why haven’t any of us heard about it, then?” Clint asks, raising an eyebrow, looking like he wants to call bullshit on it all. He plops down unceremoniously on the sofa, waiting for a story. 

“Considering it happened in London in ‘44,” Bucky starts to say and Steve has a brief moment of panic when Bucky mentions London. Before Bucky can fully get the year out, he slaps a hand over Bucky’s mouth and all but sits on him. 

“I swear on my Ma’s grave that if you say what I think you’re going to say next, I’m murdering you in your sleep,” Steve hisses when Bucky pokes the palm of his hand with his tongue. Steve just gives Bucky an unimpressed look. 

“I’ve never heard about this, wait what?” Tony asks, looking all too gleeful. “Come on, this is going to be great.” 

“Stop licking my hand, you bastard,” Steve says to Bucky. “You think that’s going to stop me?” 

Steve can just feel Bucky smirk underneath his hand. The next second, he’s on the floor and Bucky’s sitting on the couch criss-crossed, still smirking. 

“Hate you,” Steve mutters, leaping to his feet again. “Absolutely hate you.” 

“So,” Bucky says. “All of us got leave for three days somewhere in the middle of April, maybe, and Peggy, Steve, and I decided to hit the town. And by that I mean we forced Steve to come with us while we—” 

“I don’t know why you’re so intent on telling this story when we both know who I got caught with,” Steve interrupts, giving Bucky a meaningful look. _Really? Now? Is that how you want to do it?_

Bucky shrugs, a _yes_ that couldn’t be any clearer. 

“Ooh,” Clint says. “Who was that?” 

“Me,” Bucky smugly declares. “And Stark and Peggy found us. This one couldn’t stop stammering for the next week. You should have heard—” 

“You??” Tony gapes. And then his faces changes like something just clicked in his head. “Oh my god, you’re like childhood sweethearts, aren’t you? You’re the original 1940s gay sex scandal. That what you meant. This is... ha! Fuck, I owe Rhodey an IOU.” 

“You could have just said Bucky’s name when we asked who popped your cherry last time,” Clint says. 

“Oh,” Steve says, “That would be a lie.” 

**Author's Note:**

> [Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird)  
>   
> The Chapters:  
> I. cherry stems and knots  
> II. cherry desserts  
> III. cherry-picked data  
> IV. popping his cherry  
> V. black cherry seltzer  
> VI. bloody red cherries  
> VII. buying cherries  
> VIII. george washington's cherry tree  
> IX. cherry red makeup  
> X. cherry cola  
> XI. bite of the cherry  
> XII. with a cherry on top  
> XIII. as different as apples and oranges (and cherries)  
> XIV. cherries in the snow :)  
> XV. cherry tomatoes  
> XVI. cherry blossoms in D.C.  
> XVII. popping his cherry pt. 2
> 
>  
> 
> ALSO: The OC in ‘cherry red makeup’ and ‘bite of the cherry’ is an actual friend of mine who is just as badass as Agent V, minus the _nose_ piercing and the degree from UMASS (though she does want to study comp sci and history when she goes to college). Unfortunately she’s cut off all the red hair now, when this was written, but she’s no less as steely and intelligent than the agent. There’s a running joke amongst everyone that she’s a spy (or a profiler) for some government agency for how well she’s good at that kind of shit. The first name’s mine btw :)
> 
> For people who really don’t like OC’s in stories, oops? Just... just skip those if you have to? IDK what to tell you.


End file.
